The Alabama Senate Thursday moved a bill targeting same-sex marriage to a new committee, likely slowing down its progress in the upper chamber.

Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh, R-Anniston, sent the legislation -- which would prevent marriage officiants from presiding over weddings they object to – from the Senate Health Committee to the Senate Judiciary Committee in a floor motion, a day after a Health subcommittee approved it.

"There were some concerns yesterday that it was more of a judiciary issue as opposed to a health issue," said Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Cam Ward, R-Alabaster. "There were some questions as to whether it should have ever been in the Health committee to begin with."

The legislation, sponsored by Rep. Jim Hill, R-Odenville, says that no one "authorized or permitted to solemnize marriages" is required to do so. The bill encompasses everyone from ministers to probate judges, and also says that no religious organization is required to provide – or be sued over a refusal to provide – "accommodations, facilities, advantages, privileges, services or goods" related to marriage.

No person authorized to perform a marriage ceremony in the state of Alabama is currently forced to conduct one they may object to. As he has in the past, Hill said the legislation would address concerns judges have had over that fact, in light of an ongoing controversy over same-sex marriage, which was performed in the state for three weeks in February before the Alabama Supreme Court ordered a halt to it.

Opponents of the legislation have expressed concerns that the "services" element of the law could allow religiously-based institutions, such as hospitals, to deny visitation rights and other services to same-sex couples. Critics have also unfavorably compared the bill to Indiana's controversial Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which some feared could lead to legal discrimination against LGBT individuals.

"It's a sensitive issue," Marsh said after the Senate adjourned Thursday. "I think it should have gone to (the Judiciary Committee) in the first place . . . I wanted to get it to that committee to be discussed further before it was brought to the floor."

The subcommittee vote was highly unusual. Most bills in the Alabama Legislature are voted on by the full committee in which they are located. Even more unusual is the move of the bill from one committee to another after an affirmative vote: The subcommittee approved the measure Wednesday 5-1.

Ward, who voted for the bill despite raising questions about the need for it, said the move will affect the velocity of the legislation.

"We'll have to have a public hearing and a vote," he said. "It will likely slow it down, but we'll hear it at the appropriate time, I'm sure."

Rep. Patricia Todd, D-Birmingham, the only openly gay member of the Legislature and a vocal opponent of the legislation, declined to say Thursday what the move meant for the future of the bill.

"You'll have to ask them," she said. "But it belongs in Judiciary. It shouldn't have been in Health."

Marsh said he wanted to make sure the issue was "handled properly."

"I did not want any chance of people getting upset about where the bill had gone," he said.